The Spirit of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters explores Montesquieu’s careful treatment of the spiritual, ethical, and civic dilemmas France encountered in the early 18th Century. In examining Montesquieu’s response to Bourbon France’s commercial and political culture of this time, it will help deepen our understanding of his political philosophy.

This paper deals with an unpublished lead seal was found during the excavation works within the chandler’s workshop of Vatopedi, a later structure which was added to the eastern face of the bell tower (1427). The seal names a Constantine, chartoularios and epi tou patriarchikou sekretou and dates back to 10th till early 11th century. It is one of the rare direct sources regarding the very early period of the monastery, from which we have no other information, and serves (...) to highlight the attention which the central ecclesiastical administration placed upon it already from the first years after its founding. It also shows the vibrant activities of its monks and their notable network of contacts with high-ranking political and ecclesiastical officials in the capital. (shrink)

This article relates the work of André Leroi-Gourhan and mostly his two-volume ok Le geste et la parole to art theory. More specifically, it is concerned with central debates on artistic creativity and examines how Leroi-Gourhan can contribute to them. After presenting some general premises of Leroi-Gourhan’s work (I), its second part (II) argues that his theory on ›rhythms‹ supplies valuable insights to the debate of Kunstwollen and materialism. The third part (III) discusses his work within the debate of industrialization (...) and audiovisual culture as opposed to manual and artisanal creativity. The fourth part (IV) links Leroi-Gourhan’s conclusions on perception and digitality with some aspects of contemporary art theory. On the whole, this article argues that Leroi-Gourhans’s work provides flexible analytical tools in order to think art history and human evolution in conjunction, as well as a specifi c framework for examining creativity within the general cultural and technological shifts after the modern age. The conclusions of this essay shed some light on Leroi-Gourhan’s theories on art and offer some methodological perspectives to contemporary artistic theory. (shrink)

Perceptual experience is one of our fundamental sources of epistemic justification—roughly, justification for believing that a proposition is true. The ability of perceptual experience to justify beliefs can nevertheless be questioned. This article focuses on an important challenge that arises from countenancing that perceptual experience is cognitively penetrable. -/- The thesis of cognitive penetrability of perception states that the content of perceptual experience can be influenced by prior or concurrent psychological factors, such as beliefs, fears and desires. Advocates of this (...) thesis could for instance claim that your desire of having a tall daughter might influence your perception, so that she appears to you to be taller than she is. Although cognitive penetrability of perception is a controversial empirical hypothesis, it does not appear implausible. The possibility of its veracity has been adduced to challenge positions that maintain that perceptual experience has inherent justifying power. -/- This article presents some of the most influential positions in contemporary literature about whether cognitive penetration would undermine perceptual justification and why it would or would not do so. -/- Some sections of this article focus on phenomenal conservatism, a popular conception of epistemic justification that more than any other has been targeted with objections that adduce the cognitive penetrability of experience. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to articulate a distinction between habit and bodily skill as different ways of acting without deliberation. I start by elaborating on a distinction between habit and skill as different kinds of dispositions. Then I argue that this distinction has direct implications for the varieties of automaticity exhibited in habitual and skilful bodily acts. The argument suggests that paying close attention to the metaphysics of agency can help to articulate more precisely questions regarding the varieties (...) of automaticity exhibited in overt action. (shrink)

Combining philosophical and political analysis, this study offers a comprehensive reassessment of Castoriadis' contribution to critical theory in and through his critical confrontation with both the crisis of the traditional Left and the crisis of modern capitalist societies. The key concepts of 'crisis' and 'critique' are considered throughout the text and Castoriadis' ideas are situated in a critical debate with other radical thinkers, such as Lefort, Pannekoek, Arendt, Althusser, Axelos, Papaioannou and Marx. The study supplies an extensive analysis and explores (...) the contemporary relevance of Castoriadis' views regarding the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Hungarian revolt of 1956 and the events of May 1968 in France. It argues for a re-radicalization of his thought in light of the current capitalist crisis and seeks to trace his radical alternative to crisis by critically examining and further elaborating his positions with respect to socialism, autonomy and revolution. (shrink)

A sample of 259 South African managers completed a survey originally administered by Nel (1992). The results of the current study indicated a favourable move on four of the 15 questionable actions used to assess each group's ethical predisposition. Furthermore, the grand means for the two temporal-based samples also provided anecdotal evidence of a positive transition. Virtually identical results were in evidence when the segment of 89 top managers was compared to the sample of its higher level peers from the (...) earlier study by Nel. The results support the premise that today's South African managers have a more ethical predisposition than did their peers of some 20 years prior to them. However, the study concurrently documents the reality that there is ample room for further improvement. (shrink)

An Introduction to basic metaepistemological debates and positions.

This paper seeks to develop a phenomenological account of the disorientation of grief, specifically the relationship between disorientation and the breakdown in practical self-understanding at the heart of grief. I argue that this breakdown cannot be sufficiently understood as a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space that leaves the bereaved individual at a loss as to how to go on. Examining the experience of losing a loved person and a loved person-to-be, I instead propose (...) that this breakdown should be understood primarily in relation to a distinctive kind of futurity operative in disorientation,irrespectiveof the extent to which there is a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space. Drawing on the resources afforded by Heidegger’s phenomenology, I argue that it is acore characteristicof the experience of disorientation in grief that the grieving person can no longer meaningfully press ahead into aspecific futural self. This view comes with certain advantages over existing accounts of the temporality of grief for making sense of the disorientated relationship to futurity, which the appeal to Heideggerian resources makes possible. (shrink)

Several authors have argued that the things one does in the course of skilled and habitual activity present a difficult case for the ‘standard story’ of action. They are things intentionally done, but they do not seem to be suitably related to mental states. I suggest that once manifestations of habit are properly distinguished from exercises of skills and other kinds of spontaneous acts, we can see that habit raises a distinctive sort of problem. I examine certain responses that have (...) been given, as well as responses that could be given on behalf of the standard story to the problems presented by habitual activity. These responses rely on the idea of a kind of intention that does not ensue from conscious thought or deliberation. I raise three different objections to this line of response. The conclusion is that habit explains aspects of human behavior that cannot be accounted by ascribing intentions of any kind. (shrink)

Bill Pollard has recently developed an account of habits of action, endeavoring to rehabilitate the traditional notion of habit in a way that can be used to address current philosophical concerns. I argue that Pollard’s account has important shortcomings. The account is intended to apply indiscriminately to both habitual and skilled acts, but this overlooks crucial distinctions. Moreover, Pollard’s account fails to do justice to the various ways in which the idea of habit figures in the explanation and assessment of (...) action. These shortcomings are a consequence of certain assumptions Pollard shares with the accounts of mind and action he sets to criticize. As long as these assumptions are left intact, the potential of dispositional notions such as habit and skill to contribute to contemporary debates will not be realized. (shrink)

Metaepistemology Metaepistemology is, roughly, the branch of epistemology that asks questions about first-order epistemological questions. It inquires into fundamental aspects of epistemic theorizing like metaphysics, epistemology, semantics, agency, psychology, responsibility, reasons for belief, and beyond. So, if as traditionally conceived, epistemology is the theory of knowledge, metaepistemology is the theory of the theory of knowledge. … Continue reading Metaepistemology →.

Nielsen Busch and Mjaaland argue that controlled donation after circulatory death (DCD), and normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) do not violate the dead donor rule (DDR) (Nielsen Busch and Mjaala...

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 47-49.

This paper seeks to develop a phenomenological account of the disorientation of grief, specifically the relationship between disorientation and the breakdown in practical self-understanding at the heart of grief. I argue that this breakdown cannot be sufficiently understood as a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space that leaves the bereaved individual at a loss as to how to go on. Examining the experience of losing a loved person and a loved person-to-be, I instead propose (...) that this breakdown should be understood primarily in relation to a distinctive kind of futurity operative in disorientation, irrespective of the extent to which there is a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space. Drawing on the resources afforded by Heidegger’s phenomenology, I argue that it is a core characteristic of the experience of disorientation in grief that the grieving person can no longer meaningfully press ahead into a specific futural self. This view comes with certain advantages over existing accounts of the temporality of grief for making sense of the disorientated relationship to futurity, which the appeal to Heideggerian resources makes possible. (shrink)

Expressivism is a blossoming meta-semantic framework sometimes relying on what Carter and Chrisman call “the core expressivist maneuver.” That is, instead of asking about the nature of a certain kind of value, we should be asking about the nature of the value judgment in question. According to expressivists, this question substitution opens theoretical space for the elegant, economical, and explanatorily powerful expressivist treatment of the relevant domain. I argue, however, that experimental work in cognitive psychology can shed light on how (...) the core expressivist maneuver operates at the cognitive level and that this: raises worries about the aptness of the expressivist question substitution and supports an evolutionary debunking argument against expressivism. Since evolutionary debunking arguments are usually run in favor of expressivism, this creates an obvious puzzle for expressivists. I wrap up by briefly responding to the objection that the debunking argument against expressivism overgeneralizes and, therefore, should be rejected. (shrink)

A. Schopenhauer has proposed some intriguing and even challenging views on the link of representation to sensoriality. Since this has become a key issue for studies on spectatorship, some aspects of Schopenhauer’s philosophy could be critically examined within the framework of audio-visual media. The present article undertakes this task with a focus on two different notions that concern spectatorship. First, it examines whether the Schopnehaurian conception of a representational ‘motive’ can be incorporated into the study of a cinematic product and (...) suggests that this would involve a ‘realist’ account of cinema and audio-visual culture. Second, it associates the notion of ‘distraction’, which, since Benjamin, has been central to the reception of audio-visuality, with the philosophy of Schopenhauer. The article argues that current audio-visual culture resides in a simultaneous interiorization and exteriorization of ‘distraction’. In the light of this analysis, the work of Schopenhauer appears to be of use for understanding the wide distribution and deep insertion of audio-visuality in contemporary culture. (shrink)

A central argument against Ryle’s (The concept of mind, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1949) distinction between propositional and non propositional knowledge has relied on linguistic evidence. Stanley and Williamson (J Philos 98:411–444, 2001) have claimed that knowing-how ascriptions do not differ in any relevant syntactic or semantic respect from ascriptions of propositional knowledge, concluding thereby that knowing-how ascriptions attribute propositional knowledge, or a kind thereof. In this paper I examine the cross-linguistic basis of this argument. I focus on the (...) linguistic analysis of practical knowledge ascriptions in Modern Greek, although the issues raised are not restricted to one language. It is relatively straightforward to show that none of the three types of practical knowledge ascriptions in Modern Greek is an embedded question configuration, and hence Stanley and Williamson original claim is confined to certain languages only. This is not the end of the matter, however, since Stanley (Nous 45:207–238, 2011) argues that the equivalents of ‘knowing-how’ ascriptions in certain languages should be semantically analyzed as embedded questions despite their syntactic form. I argue that this fallback position faces a host of empirical and theoretical problems, in view of which it cannot bear the weight Stanley puts on it, supporting a conclusion about the kind of knowledge thereby attributed. (shrink)

The intellectual ferment that emerged in postwar France was marked by the renaissance of Hegel’s thought and the focus on Marx's early writings. In a parallel way, the death of Stalin, the uprising of 1953 in East Germany and the revolts in Hungary and Poland in 1956 provoked a thorough critique against the theory and practice of orthodox Marxism. The relationship between Marx and Marxism or the issue about the philosophical foundations of Marx’s thinking became the subject of long-standing controversy (...) and gave rise to several interpretations of Marx’s work. These debates were decisively fostered by the foreign intellectuals and refugees who arrived in France after the end of the Second World War; inter alia, a generation of young Greek intellectuals that included the prominent figures of Kostas Axelos, Cornelius Castoriadis and Kostas Papaioannou. This article focuses on Axelos’, Castoriadis’ and Papaioannou’s critique of Marx and provides an anti-critique of their intellectual endeavour. It outlines the common basis of their critical confrontation with the Marxian theorizing and argues that they interpreted Marx’s thought in a manner similar to orthodox Marxism. Despite the undoubted merits of their critique, they did not take it to all its theoretical and political conclusions. As a result, the horizons they opened lack radicalism and their dialogue with Marx was left open to being misunderstood. (shrink)

The goal of perception is to infer the most plausible source of sensory stimulation. Unisensory perception of temporal order, however, appears to require no inference, since the order of events can be uniquely determined from the order in which sensory signals arrive. Here we demonstrate a novel perceptual illusion that casts doubt on this intuition: in three studies (N=607) the experienced event timings are determined by causality in real-time. Adult observers viewed a simple three-item sequence ACB, which is typically remembered (...) as ABC (Bechlivanidis & Lagnado, 2016), in line with principles of causality. When asked to indicate the time at which events B and C occurred, points of subjective simultaneity shifted so that the assumed cause B appeared earlier and the assumed effect C later, despite full attention and repeated viewings. This first demonstration of causality reversing perceived temporal order cannot be explained by post-perceptual distortion, lapsed attention, or saccades. (shrink)

The domain of agential powers is marked by a contrast that does not arise in the case of dispositions of inanimate objects: the contrast between propensities or tendencies on the one hand, and capacities or abilities on the other. According to Ryle (1949), this contrast plays an important role in the ‘logical geography’ of the dispositional concepts used in the explanation and assessment of action. However, most subsequent philosophers use the terms of art ‘power’ or ‘disposition’ indiscriminately in formulating central (...) metaphysical claims about human agency, assuming that an adequate account of inanimate dispositions can safely be used for such purposes. As a result, the distinctive features of propensities and capacities drop out of view. This is bound to obscure distinctions of crucial importance to the understanding of human agency. In order to show this, I undertake to articulate some central differences between propensities and capacities. Propensities and capacities have a different relation to value, as well as a concomitant difference in their metaphysical structure. The argument points to an explanation of why the distinction between propensities and capacities does not arise in the case of non-agential powers. This explanation takes us back to questions about the nature of human agency. (shrink)

This book offers the first comprehensive assessment of Heidegger’s account of affective phenomena. Affective phenomena play a significant role in Heidegger’s philosophy — his analyses of mood significantly influenced diverse fields of research such as existentialism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, theology and cultural studies. Despite this, no single collection of essays has been exclusively dedicated to this theme. Comprising twelve innovative essays by leading Heidegger scholars, this volume skilfully explores the role that not only Angst plays in Heidegger’s work, but also love (...) and boredom. Exploring the nature of affective phenomena in Heidegger, as well as the role they play in wider philosophical debates, the volume is a valuable addition to Heideggerian scholarship and beyond, enriching current debates across disciplines on the nature of human agency. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose that economic sustainability is seen in terms of (inter-temporal and inter-national) value creation. We claim that value appropriation (or capture), can become a constraint to economic sustainability. We propose that for sustainable value creation to be fostered, corporate governance needs to be aligned to public and supra-national governance. In order to achieve this, a hierarchically layered set of ‘agencies’, needs to be diagnosed and the issue of incentive alignment addressed. Enlightened self-interest, pluralism and diversity, as (...) well as a representative supra-national organisation for world-wide economic sustainability can serve as a new, more ‘ethically correct’ governance for economic sustainability, but not a panacea. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to defend Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics against what I call the radical hermeneutic critique, specifically the critique developed in Robert Bernasconi’s article “’You Don’t Know What I’m Talking About’: Alterity and the Hermeneutic Ideal” (1995). Key to this critique is the claim that Gadamer’s account does not rise to the ethical task of embracing the alterity of the Other, but instead reduces it to a projection of one’s self. The implication is therefore that Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics (...) has to be rejected on ethical grounds, as it does not appreciate but assimilates the alterity of the Other. In contrast to this radical hermeneutic critique, I argue that Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics can accommodate an Other that is not assimilated but appreciated, on the condition that the unique status of a dialogue with the Other as a person is no longer neglected, as Gadamer does, but instead truly distinguished from a dialogue with the Other as a text. (shrink)

Most philosophers and psychologists assume that habitual acts do not ensue from deliberation, but are direct responses to the circumstances: habit essentially involves a variety of automaticity. My objective in this paper is to show that this view is unduly restrictive. A habit can explain an act in various ways. Pointing to the operation of automaticity is only one of them. I draw attention to the fact that acquired automaticity is one outgrowth of habituation that is relevant to explanation, but (...) not the only one. Habituation shapes our emotional and motivational make up in ways that affect deliberation itself. Hence mentioning a habit might be indispensable in explaining an act which nevertheless ensues from deliberation. The view that habitual acts are direct responses to the circumstances implies an impoverished conception of habit, which fails to do justice to its rich explanatory potential in theoretical and pre-theoretical contexts, as well as to its role in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we created and implemented from November 2020 to February 2021 a monthly educational pilot program of philosophical management of stress based on Science, Humanism and Epicurean Pragmatism, which was offered to employees of 26 municipalities in the Prefecture of Attica, Greece. The program named “Philosophical Distress Management Operation System” (Philo.Di.M.O.S.) is novel and unique in its kind, as it combines a certain Greek philosophical tradition (Epicurean) that concurs with modern scientific knowledge. The (...) program was designed to be implemented in a period of crisis; therefore, it used a fast-paced, easy to learn and practice philosophical approach to stress management, based on cognitive psychotherapy. The philosophical approach to stress management has the advantage that it can be offered to most people, regardless of age and educational level. The pilot program was effective in achieving its objectives, shown by statistical comparisons of the trainees’ responses to anonymous questionnaires before and after the month-long training. The successful Philo.Di.M.O.S. program, thus, based on a solid scientific and philosophical basis, offers a paradigm of stress management during crises and could be useful in Greece and internationally. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Die ontologischen Grundlagen der Freiheitstheorie von Leibniz" verfügbar.

With contributions from a number of pioneering researchers in the field, this collection is aimed not only at researchers and scientists in nonlinear dynamics but also at a broader audience interested in understanding and exploring how modern chaos theory has developed since the days of Poincaré. This book was motivated by and is an outcome of the CHAOS 2015 meeting held at the Henri Poincaré Institute in Paris, which provided a perfect opportunity to gain inspiration and discuss new perspectives on (...) the history, development and modern aspects of chaos theory. Henri Poincaré is remembered as a great mind in mathematics, physics and astronomy. His works, well beyond their rigorous mathematical and analytical style, are known for their deep insights into science and research in general, and the philosophy of science in particular. The Poincaré conjecture (only proved in 2006) along with his work on the three-body problem are considered to be the foundation of modern chaos theory. (shrink)

I sketch an interpretation of Tolstoy’s implicit moral theory on the basis of his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I suggest that Tolstoy is a theistic moral realist who believes that God’s will identifies the mind-independent truths of morality. He also thinks that, roughly, it suffices to heed natural moral emotions (like love and compassion) to know the right thing to do, that is, God’s will. In appraisal of Tolstoy’s interesting and original theory that I dub ‘theistic populist (...) sentimentalism’, I argue that it prima facie runs into a string of fallacies and undertakes dubious assumptions that render it open to question. (shrink)

This book explores the topography of Mount Athos, emphasizing the significance of silence and communal ritual in its understanding. Mount Athos, a mountainous peninsula in northern Greece, is a valuable case study of sacred topography, as it is one of the world’s largest monastic communities and an important pilgrimage destination. Its phenomenological examination highlights the importance of embodiment in the experience of religious places. Combining interdisciplinary insights from architectural theory, philosophy, theology and anthropology with archival and ethnographic materials, the book (...) brings a fresh contribution to both Athonite studies and scholarship on sacred space. By focusing on the interrelation between silence and communal ritual, it offers an alternative to the traditional art historical, objectifying approaches. It reintroduces the phenomenological understanding of place, investigating also how this is expressed through a number of narratives, such as travel literature, maps and diaries. (shrink)

In his 1988 University Lecture in Religion at Arizona State University, Josef van Ess argued for a widespread concept of a “compact” God in early Islam. The notion is expressed by ṣamad in Sura 112.2, an enigmatic word, which “in the first half of the second Islamic century … was understood as meaning ‘massive, compact.’” There is Islamic evidence for this, van Ess argued: “The best testimony, however, comes from outside Islam: Theodore Abū Qurra, bishop of Ḥarrān in Upper Mesopotamia (...) , translated ṣamad into Greek as sphyropēktos, a quite unusual word meaning something like ‘hammered together, closely united.’ Nicetas of Byzantium later on used holosphyros instead, ‘entirely chased in metal.’” Those familiar with the negative reception of these Byzantine translations of ṣamad by several scholars will undoubtedly be surprised by van Ess's statement, which considers the translations as trustworthy testimony. When John Meyendorff had earlier wondered tentatively whether some Byzantine interpretations of Islamic doctrine, including God sphyropēktos or holosphyros, could “in fact come from some forms of popular Arab religion—distinct, of course, from orthodox Islam—which were known to the Byzantines,” his thought was called “provocative.” Scholars translate sphyropēktos as “beaten solid into a ball” or “solid ” and holosphyros as “of hammer-beaten metal” , “made of solid, hammer-beaten metal” , “impenetrable” , or “made of solid metal beaten to a spherical shape” . They are often inclined to assume that the Greek words represent “a clumsy translation” , “a blatant, derogatory mistranslation of the divine epithet ṣamad” , “the result of a biased attitude and wrong interpretation of the Qur՚anic proclamation of Allah” , or “one of the stock examples in Christian polemics against Islam” or that they were “probably originally chosen for polemical reasons, to claim that Muslims believe in a material, corporeal God” . Perhaps under the impression of these views, in his recent translation of Theodore Abū Qurrah, John C. Lamoreaux, instead of sphyropēktos, adopts a variant reading, steiropēktos , meaning “barren-built.”. (shrink)

This article presents the unpublished Byzantine lead seals from the archaeological collection of Mystras which now are stored in the depots of the Museum of Mystras.The first seal names a Michael Barys . Probably he was bishop of Helos, known from another seal with metrical inscription which has not been fully read until now. – The second is a seal of an imperial protospatharios and tourmarches Spartaron Ioannes . This military unit is attested by this seal and other three parallel (...) pieces from the collection of Dumbarton Oaks. The name Spartaron and the fact that this seal was found in Sparta can be taken as evidence for the existence of a military unit which recalls the capabilities and fighting prowess of the Ancient Spartans. – The third lead seal mentions a vestarches and judge of the Velum, of Peloponnesos and Hellas Petros Serblias. It describes an unknown stadium of the career of Petros Serblias, a person already known from other sources.At the end four metallic plates are presented, found near to the Upper Gate of the castle of Mystras, which are caps for bottles of theriaca, a well known antiseptic medicine from the apothecary of Due Mori in Venice .Two of the seals were found in a recently unearthed Byzantine olive-press in a quarter of Byzantine Sparta where the city was expanded in the time between the tenth and twelfth century. (shrink)